‘They tell me ’tis decided you depart:
’Tis wise—’tis well, but not the less a pain;
I have no further claim on your young heart,
Mine is the victim, and would be again:
To love too much has been the only art
I used.’
Julia tells Juan that she loved him, and still loves him tenderly:
‘I loved, I love you, for this love have lost
State, station, Heaven, mankind’s, my own esteem,
And yet cannot regret what it hath cost,
So dear is still the memory of that dream.’
‘All is o’er
For me on earth, except some years to hide
My shame and sorrow deep in my heart’s core.’
The seal to this letter was a sunflower—Elle vous suit partout. It may be mentioned here that Byron had a seal bearing this motto.
When Juan realized that the parting was final, he exclaims:
‘No more—no more—oh! never more, my heart,
Canst thou be my sole world, my universe!
Once all in all, but now a thing apart,
Thou canst not be my blessing or my curse:
The illusion’s gone for ever.’
In the third canto we have a hint of Byron’s feelings after his wife had left him:
‘He entered in the house no more his home,
A thing to human feelings the most trying,
And harder for the heart to overcome,
Perhaps, than even the mental pangs of dying;
To find our hearthstone turned into a tomb,
And round its once warm precincts palely lying
The ashes of our hopes.’
‘But whatsoe’er he had of love reposed
On that beloved daughter; she had been
The only thing which kept his heart unclosed
Amidst the savage deeds he had done and seen,
A lonely pure affection unopposed:
There wanted but the loss of this to wean
His feelings from all milk of human kindness,
And turn him like the Cyclops mad with blindness.’
In the fourth canto we are introduced to Haidée, who resembled Lambro in features and stature, even to the delicacy of their hands. We are told that owing to the violence of emotion and the agitation of her mind she broke a bloodvessel, and lay unconscious on her couch for days. Like Astarte in ‘Manfred,’ ‘her blood was shed: I saw, but could not stanch it’:
‘She looked on many a face with vacant eye,
On many a token without knowing what:
She saw them watch her without asking why,
And recked not who around her pillow sat.
*******
‘Anon her thin wan fingers beat the wall
In time to the harper’s tune: he changed the theme
And sang of Love; the fierce name struck through all
Her recollection; on her flashed the dream
Of what she was, and is, if ye could call
To be so being; in a gushing stream
The tears rushed forth from her o’erclouded brain,
Like mountain mists at length dissolved in rain.’
‘Short solace, vain relief! Thought came too quick,
And whirled her brain to madness.’
‘She died, but not alone; she held within,
A second principle of Life, which might
Have dawned a fair and sinless child of sin;
But closed its little being without light.’
‘Thus lived—thus died she; never more on her
Shall Sorrow light, or Shame.’